12/10/2017
A colleague recently asked me to give her feedback on a Wix website her partner had created. She couldn't remember the exact URL so she did a search on Google using various keywords and versions of the name. Nothing came up. The site wasn't listed anywhere.
When she sent me a link later, I used view source in my browser to see what was happening and didn't see any content– just coding, which threw me for a loop. It turns out Wix keeps all the content on a separate server from the actual site code.
All web systems/platforms have a bit of a learning curve, so I wasn't surprised, but it's just weird to me to separate the content like that. It turns out that Wix does have search engine optimization (SEO) tools and sections in the control panel to add SEO information, but if you don't know about them, how would you know?
Since they have already built the site and added the content (and need to get busy with the rest of the business), it's probably best for them to continue with Wix for now and spend time on SEO.
I am not a fan of non-standard web services. Most of the time if something is confusing or unusual, it's because it's designed to be that way to keep you hostage or get you to pay more for support.
If they had contacted me earlier, I would have recommended going to WordPress.com and setup a free WP site. WP is easy to learn, with tons of design options and you later you can export your content to a full install of WordPress on your own website.
More on this subject later...